Religion: Situation Report

THE democratic spirit of Protestantism gave women their first
opportunity in the U.S. as preachers, ministers, and even founders of
denominations. Mary Baker Eddy started one of the nation's only
female-dominated religions, Christian Science; though the denomination
has no ordained ministers, a majority of its 5,848 "practitioners," or
healers, are women. More recently the International Church of the
Foursquare Gospel, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in the 1920s, has
followed a similar pattern: today at least 40% of its 2,690 clergy are
female.

More traditional denominations of U.S. Protestantism have been slower,
but are coming round. U.S. Presbyterians in the North began...